1705, Yoshiyasu became daimyō of Kōfu Domain. Sorai remained in Edo, but visited Kai Province in 1706 at the behest of Yoshiyasu, and wrote a travelogue of the journey, In 1709, following the death of Tokigawa Tsunayoshi, Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu fell from favor, and Sorai left his service and relocated to Nihonbashi, where he opened a private school, the Kenenjuku.He gradually turned away from the teachings of Zhu Xi to develop his own philosophy and school. In 1722, Sorai was asked to return to public office under the 8th Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, but he refused. He continued to teach until his death in 1728. His grave is located at the temple of Chōshō-ji in Mita, Minato, Tokyo (). The gravestone has the inscription in front and an inscription on the back stating that the epitaph was by Honda Tadanori and the writing by the noted calligrapher Matsushita Useki. The tomb was designated a National Historic Site in 1949 . Teachings Sorai wrote several influential works in which he identified two fundamental weaknesses in the philosophy of Neo-Confucianism. The first was in the bakufu-domain system, which by the eighteenth century was in trouble. As a result, he doubted whether the reliance on finding an individual's ethical good was sufficient. As such he argued that the political crisis of the time required more than perfecting moral character. Moreover, he saw the ancient Chinese sage-kings as concerned not only with morality but also with government itself. His second disagreement with Neo-Confucianism was that he felt putting too much emphasis on morality repressed human nature, which was based on human emotion. However, these weaknesses he felt stemmed not from a deficiency in Confucianism itself, but rather from a misreading of classic works of the Four Books and the Five Classics by Neo-Confucianists, which he insisted "did not know the old words." Sorai went back to the ancient works for more reliable knowledge, stating "The ultimate form of scholarly knowledge is history." To him, these historical works were the ultimate source, even for an ever-changing present. Sorai thought that study of philosophy began with the study of language. In this he was highly influenced by the Ancient Rhetoric school of the Ming period, which was a neoclassical movement that saw the Qin and Han periods as the model for prose, and the Tang period for poetry. The Sorai school introduced Selections of Tang Poetry, a work